"When this year I was told 'E.T., phone home,' I understood and immediately replied: 'At last!'" Gilles Jacob, the festival's president, said in a statement posted Thursday on the festival's website.

The 66th Cannes festival will be held May 15-26.

"It is an honor and a privilege to preside over the jury of a festival that proves, again and again, that cinema is the language of the world," Spielberg said in a statement from festival organizers. "The most prestigious of its kind, the festival has always established the motion picture as a cross cultural and generational medium."